Introduction Louise Robbins Since the adoption of the Library’s Bill of Rights by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1939, but more especially since its strengthening as the Library Bill of Rights (LBR) in 1948, librarians have come to accept the concept of intellectual freedom as central to the profession. But this acceptance came gradually, as librarians confronted challenges to their professional autonomy in book selection and collection building and as they responded to changes in the social, political, and economic environ- ment. In addressing the ALA conference in 1940, newly appointed Librar- ian of Congress Archibald MacLeish told librarians that they lacked pro- fessional status because they had no consensus on the “social end which librarianship exists to serve” (1940, p. 385). Referring to the worldwide rise of fascism in the 1930s, MacLeish called librarians to become guard- ians of the values of democracy, to examine how their role facilitated the idea of a government in which an informed electorate makes decisions. He described how he saw that social purpose: “To subject the record of experience to intelligent control so that all parts of the record shall be somewhere deposited; to bring to the servicing of that record the great- est learning and the most responsible intelligence the country can pro- vide; to make available the relevant parts of that record to those who have need of it at the time they have need of it and in a form responsive to their needs” (p. 422). This social role, MacLeish believed, would give li- brarians a function as noble as that of doctors, lawyers, or ministers (pre- dominantly male professions all)—using their expertise in the service of freedom. It is easy to make the connections between librarians’ growing adherence to a belief in intellectual freedom, even when honored more in the breach than in the observance, with their struggle for professional legitimacy and status (Robbins, 1996.) An earlier Library Trends issue on the LBR (W. Wiegand, 1996) pointed LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 63, No. 1, 2014 (“New Perspectives on Intellectual Freedom,” edited by Mark McCallon), pp. 2–10. © 2014 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois 02_63 1 robbins 002-010.indd 2 9/30/14 10:00 AM introduction/robbins 3 out that that ever-evolving document has no structural authority, no le- gally enforceable status—and in fact is a mishmash of philosophical pre- cepts only partially supported by the First Amendment and its jurispru- dence (S. Wiegand, 1996). By 2014 it has, however, accrued considerable normative authority or the power of common belief—at least for most librarians, if not for those who would challenge the LBR. In fact, one could argue that the LBR, and librarians’ defense of it, has won admir- ers—or strong detractors—from members of the public who might not have thought much about librarians before. A Danziger cartoon of June 5, 2002, for example, shows a stern librarian refusing to answer the threat- ening tactics of a gaggle of FBI agents following the passage of the 2001 USAPATRIOT Act. The image contrasts sharply with a similar cartoon of April 1949, in which a teacher cowers at her desk as members of a Subver- sive Activities Committee challenge: “You Read Books, Eh?” (Herblock, 1949). For better or for worse, then, librarians’ professional identity is de- fined at least in part—and a large part—by their avowed commitment to the principles of intellectual freedom as articulated in the Library Bill of Rights and other documents, such as the Statement on Labeling, found in the ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Manual (8th ed., 2010). Evelyn Geller (1984) has written the prehistory, and Louise Robbins (1996) has written the early history of the LBR. Toni Samek (2001) has documented the period of upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many others have written microhistories or case studies or have dealt with some aspect of intellec- tual history in librarianship. Fortunately for readers of this volume and for the profession of librarianship, there is more to be written, new voices to be heard, and new perspectives to be applied. The authors of the essays in this collection are some of those voices. Three of the essays were first submitted in response to a call for papers by the Library History Round Table of the ALA for the 2012 annual con- ference on “Intellectual Freedom and Libraries in America and Abroad: Historical Perspectives.” Following the conference, additional essays were solicited, and the authors of the first and last essays in this collection re- sponded. Emily Knox, whose “Intellectual Freedom and the Agnostic–Postmod- ernist View of Reading Effects” sets the stage for the other essays, follows a lineage of writing about reading in librarianship that began in the Gradu- ate Library School at the University of Chicago with such luminaries as Douglas Waples and Bernard Berelson, who authored books with titles like What Reading Does to People: A Summary of Evidence on the Social Effects of Reading and a Statement of Problems for Research (1940). Knox has seized on one of the problems of research that has lurked just below the surface waiting iceberg-like to crash into librarianship’s ideology: Just why do li- brarians think people should be able to decide for themselves what to 02_63 1 robbins 002-010.indd 3 9/30/14 10:00 AM 4 library trends/summer 2014 read? Why do librarians decline to police the reading of children? And why do challengers take exception to this position and accuse librarians and publishers of corrupting children? (2013). As the librarians and pub- lishers who authored the 1953 Freedom to Read Statement so clearly said, “We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours” (Robbins, 1996, p. 192). Knox posits that librarians’ commitment to intellectual freedom is born not just of the ideology of librarianship but of a particular agnostic view of the effects of reading, of the effects of exposure to new knowl- edge. While most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American li- brarians subscribed to a traditional view of reading effects—a bad book will yield bad outcomes and a good book the reverse—as times changed, librarians’ views changed, until they were willing to take the risks implied in the Freedom to Read statement. The “fiction question” was settled in part by the insistence of readers, by circulation figures. But recent years have seen the development of reader-response criticism and theories of social construction that undercut any notion that the effects of reading are predictable so that whether a book is “good” or “bad” depends less on the words on the page or the background of the author and more on the reader’s prior experience and modes of sense-making. Support for intellectual freedom comes today, Knox says, from this agnostic position on reading effects. It is also what places librarians and their intellectual freedom ideology at odds with challengers. Knox’s explication is useful in reading the subsequent essays in this volume, as one can see the changes in attitude toward materials in collections change as the times (and the underlying understanding of reading effects) change. Eric Novotny’s article, “From Inferno to Freedom: Censorship in the Chicago Public Library, 1910–1936,” deals with the earliest period treated chronologically in this volume and the development of an early intellec- tual freedom statement. He turns to local contexts, including political controversies, to flesh out a microhistory of the Chicago Public Library’s (CPL) 1936 intellectual freedom statement. Along the way he details the CPL’s method of dealing with controversial materials while under the leadership of two directors: Henry Legler and Carl Roden. The two men represent the changing attitudes toward collections that Knox describes. Legler saw the role of the librarian as moral guardian charged with keeping “mental poison” out of the hands of the burgeoning urban popu- lation. He grew the library system, increasing access, but set up a Book In- ferno to receive and segregate “questionable books,” including light nov- els, a common practice, although not one generally advertised as Legler did. Roden was more liberal in approach and tended to purchase more 02_63 1 robbins 002-010.indd 4 9/30/14 10:00 AM introduction/robbins 5 of the “edgy” books that were now accepted as quality literature, if they were sold by reputable publishers. While Roden’s position agreeing to remove pro-German books during World War I was comparable to that of other American librarians, he found himself derided as “spineless” when he acquiesced in a 1927 mayoral candidate’s call to segregate materials having to do with Britain. His position was made worse by the fact that he was president of the ALA at the time. Media support for the library was strong, and the CPL Library Board endorsed ALA’s Reading with a Purpose pamphlets and defended readers’ right to many shades of opin- ion. Although at times Roden quietly removed or segregated books that were challenged, he likely remembered the public’s strong reaction to the 1927 events, and in 1936 the CPL embraced an intellectual freedom state- ment three years earlier than did ALA. It appears clear that, at least in part, the CPL’s intellectual freedom statement grew out of adult education efforts, such as the Reading with a Purpose pamphlets.